Under Mackerel Sky by Rick Stein – A Memoir
A friend in Australia recently told me she had been to Rick Stein’s restaurant. To which I replied that I didn’t know she
was in the UK. To this she answered “I wasn’t.”
This got me curious. I knew who Rick Stein was and associated him with Cornwall. Essentially, to me, he was a guy who sat around cooking fish all day. I knew too that he had done some television. To be honest I would often get him confused with Kieth Floyd I don’t know why I just did.. Stein and Cornwall are inextricably tied together; that was the main thing.
So why Australia? It struck me as an odd segway. When I came across his book I was keen to read his story.
Upon finishing his book Under a Mackerel Sky – A Memoir my thoughts on him all changed. I never had anything against the man but I now see that there is much more to his story than my misguided thoughts about him as a glorified fish cook, in a corner of the UK,
who gets out occasionally and films a few things. That excludes that odd metaphysical tie to Keith Floyd I created. It’s a fast read. A well written and at times a brutally honest autobiography of a full life.
Stein openly talks about his complicated childhood, and mistakes he had made over the years. He acknowledges his misdeeds without any sugar coating. Nor does he over play the success he has had in building his culinary empire. And how he got to a place seemingly so globally opposite from his home turf.
It is the documentation of a fascinating life. There was the musical career that never took off. The travels that took him from Australia to Mexico and numerous points in between. There was a time when he lived in a remote part of the Australian Outback Then there were the love triangles. Honest personal statements about the complications that happen within adult relationships. By his own admission he does not always come out the hero.
Oh yes and there is lots about his food.
By the end I was wondering what he might have left out. What Stein has done is to produce a book that gives the reader an honest look into the private backstory that has led to a very public life.